A great factory for The last days of Mankind

A possible theatre on Mars?

Abstract

On November 29^th, 1990 the former Sala Presse of Torino’s Lingotto came alive with Viennese aristocrats, the middle class and soldiers, transported on moving trolleys along aisles which defined the stage of The Last Days of Mankind. Thirty years after its historic debut, the performance can be said to have been a milestone of Italian panoramic theatre in the second half of the twentieth century. This research article intends to explore the various design elements of performance in relation to Luca Ronconi’s plays, conducted in outdoor theatre spaces which apparently should have been impossible to achieve. Daniele Spisa collaborated alongside the director in the conception of the scenes and with this performance, put his signature on the first theatre set-design of his career. From the beginning, typewriters surround the actors and the public almost wanting to stage a mystery play, a redemptive path between the pillars of an ancient deconsecrated church, where the war factory takes the place of the mouth of hell and the “press” becomes the tabernacle of a society that has reached the hour of dawn. Inside the industrial architecture of Lingotto, the situations and the hundreds of characters narrated by Kraus come alive through the incessant sliding of the scenes on tracks, built deliberately for the performance and evoking the multiplicity of the play’s locations.